Saivash Ghamaty

One of the biggest challenges in mobile game development is having your game run great on a low-end device without compromising the experience on a high-end one. We tend to optimize and budget the best experience for our high-end devices. There are many good reasons for this: better monetization, better engagement, etc. Low-end devices seem to run away from us in scope and get poorly prioritized because of the focus on high-end devices. But they’re still important! According to a recent Mixpanel trend report, ~10% of iPhone users have an iPhone 5 or below. Can we have older devices run the same graphics as new ones? You simply can’t. Give your players a comparable experience across all devices. Allow them to accomplish the same core activities that your high-end users do. The experience may not be the same, but the core progression should be close. Tips on Optimizing for Low-End Devices Think about low-end devices very early on in the project. Add checkpoints to test low-end devices at a frequency or feature check-in. Categorize your devices in buckets